Introducing Celly to My Classroom

In typical Northern Virginia fashion, we had a two-hour delay on Monday because of a little ice, which ultimately caused my school to reschedule our two exams that we had planned for the day.  There's nothing like waking up to a text stating that there was a two-hour delay, our exams were being rescheduled, and students would be dismissed at the regular time (instead of the 11:30 early release).  So . . . come to find out that we had three classes scheduled, including the two exam classes, and we were supposed to do more exam review.  Instead of grumbling about not having any lessons planned, I took this opportunity to introduce Celly to my two IBMYP English 9 students, and review for the midterm at the same time!

Celly is a free text messaging service that allows me to take polls, create 140 character quizzes, send announcements or assignments, or anything else that a Twitter-like service provides.  Celly has an app for the Android market, but not for Apple.  Not that it matters, as the students signed-up through their phones by texting @classname to 23559.  I had already set-up individual "cells" or classnames ahead of time on the Cel.ly website, so all I had to do is give the students directions on how to sign-up with each @classname and have them create a username that could be easily identified.  When I set-up the cells, I made sure to add each class separately, and choose the curated option, so I could control who was added to each class.

After each student was added, I created quiz questions (as "polls"), with the answers as #hashtags.  I put the question up on the SmartBoard for those without cellphones, so they could answer in their notebooks.  As they answered, the website kept a running tally for each #answer so the students could see the outcomes.  No names were shown during the quiz/poll, just a running tally.  Also, Celly does not show phone numbers, only usernames.  Next, I asked more open-ended questions, such as: Text an example of assonance or alliteration.  Student answers scrolled on the SmartBoard as they texted.  Toward the end of class, we went to the computer lab so students without cellphones could sign-up, and everyone could change their avatars -- such consternation about the avatars that were chosen by Celly!

Anyways, I will be experimenting with Celly this semester and seeing how I can incorporate it into my instruction.  I already see it as a great Bellringer, Entry Task, or Exit Ticket for informal assessment of student learning.  Plus, students seem to really love it!